Thunder boomed, and lightning crashed, and clouds above swirled about the little lake, as the Fluxlords of the garden tried to understand what was happening. The attacks ceased, and she had some freedom of action. She’d been afraid for a moment that one would make the sacrifice and take upon himself her binding spell, but then she realized that it probably couldn’t happen. They were collectively, not individually, stronger than she.
Suddenly a great booming male voice came from the heavens. “Go!” it ordered. “You are too much of sin and evil to remain here! You are beyond redemption!”
“If you’re truly all-powerful, the one true God, then make me look like Eve and I will leave! I won’t even resist that much!” she almost taunted. “I will not leave without my mother and my companion!”
“You dare try to bargain with me? I can sweep you out! I can crush you like a bug!”
She hadn’t thought of that angle. Still, she had no choice but to persist.
“We came to offer our help without any hope of reward or any conditions because we believed you were just and good!” she shouted at them over the roar. “You repaid an act of kindness with an attack. You’re not God! You can’t even change my form! You are a demon of Hell, evil masquerading as good, madness as perfection! If you had any good, any decency, in you, you would at least accept that and let us all leave as we came! I want to leave! A God without love and compassion is no God at all, but the rankest of evil ones!”
She wondered as she said it if she’d gone too far, if there was nothing left of the people these Fluxlords once had been. Then, suddenly, everything—the wind, the thunder, the swirling clouds—suddenly ceased. It was a nice, bright, warm day again. The Adams and the Eves came out from the forests, sang praises to God, and began to play once more.
Morgaine didn’t know what happened, but she looked around and saw neither her mother nor Verdugo. They had wandered off somewhere. She felt some despair at that realization. They were probably over there with the group, but how to tell them apart? Verdugo was probably lost, but wizards could usually tell other wizards because they always had some contact with Flux through the grid. Not here, though. Spirit no longer knew she was a wizard, or what a wizard was, and so had no connection with anything save physical reality and the master spell of the garden.
Had Morgaine had her full mathematical abilities, she could have run a seek program for Spirit; the master computers would always keep track of such things. She couldn’t even finish counting the number of Eves in and around the lake without getting confused, though. Sondra or Dell could do it, but they’d be attacked if they entered, too. Never had she felt so frustrated, and tears welled up inside of her and then came out in a flood.
“Please!” she choked through the tears. “Please give me back my mother!”
There was no response, and for a moment she was afraid she’d blown their divine fuse.
“Morgaine?”
She whirled around, hoping against hope to see her mother, but instead she saw another blond, blue-eyed Eve. Or—was it? She wiped away the tears and got hold of herself. “How do you know my name?”
“It’s me, honey. Your mother.”
Her mouth dropped in surprise. “They—restored you?”
“They—made a compromise. A compromise between their reality and ours. They said your plight and your tears had touched them, and they had been stung by your words. They had beaten me. I couldn’t fight them, even restored. They offered me a deal—for your sake. I had to take it. They said that if the daughter was bound by evil, then the mother must be bound by good. I’d been—purified, is the word they used.”
Morgaine sighed. “I guess overconfidence runs in the family. Your powers?”
“Intact. At least I have that. But I had to accept remaining in Eve, for one thing. It’s not a bad body.”
“It’s gorgeous! But everybody’s wearing it these days.”
“Look who’s talking. I also had to accept certain—other things.”
That disturbed Morgaine. “Like what?”
“They called it protection against the evils of the outside world. A shell of purity, I think they said. I know I can’t lie, cheat, steal, or kill, not even a fly, or use my power in any way but to further good. My knowledge of what is good and what is evil aren’t my standards, but theirs. I had to accept them. I have no frame of reference. Come—let’s leave. The others must be worried about us.”
Morgaine felt like crying again. “Oh, Mom!”
“Don’t cry,” responded Spirit gently. “It’s not so bad. I haven’t done much with my life since being freed of my old spells anyway. Maybe I needed this, or something like it, to shock me out of it. Come on.”
“But nobody can live as a saint! Look what it did to Grandma!”
“We’ll see. I’m not as saintly as Grandma was supposed to be.”
Spirit offered her hand and helped Morgaine up. Her mother didn’t have the strength in her arms she’d had before, but she managed. Almost instantly they were swept out, as if falling down a hole, and both landed outside the shield and fell to the ground. Their horses and packs were nearby. Spirit found Morgaine’s new shoes and what little other things she usually wore and helped her get into them.
“I guess you’ll have to re-tailor your clothes,” Morgaine noted, the new Spirit being somewhat shorter and built differently.
“No. I can’t wear anything I’m not wearing now. Not even jewelry or cosmetics or perfume. I—just can’t, that’s all. In that respect it’s like the old days. I was very much like an Eve for many years.” She stopped for a moment, then said, “Morgaine—I’m very sorry for the way I’ve been acting since you got your own spell. I, of all people, should have understood. I’m sorry if I caused you any unhappiness, and I’m particularly sorry that it took something like this to make me see the way things are.”
“Oh, Mom! It’s all right! I understand! Granddad says you make the best of what you are, rather than worry about what you were or might have been. I think he’s right. We’re still a team. A little sexy and real exhibitionists, but we’re a team.”
And they both hugged and held one another, and tears flowed from both of them. Finally, they were all cried out, and, curiously, both of them felt closer to each other than they had in many years.
Finally Spirit said, “You know—it’s funny. I haven’t cried since I was sixteen. Not when I was kidnapped, not when I was threatened and then bound by spell, not any time after. I think, maybe, I can cry now, and laugh, too. It’s crazy. I don’t know if it’s me or the spell, but it’s me now, I guess.”
Morgaine knew, however, that the spell was only the catalyst. As her spell had freed her, to a degree, from a life she hated, so, too, Spirit’s spell had freed her by restoring some of the humanity she’d lost along the way. She had been a childlike animal for decades, then suddenly she’d been restored as an adult and placed immediately in a role upon which the survival of World had depended. She had been forced to become an instant adult after long years of childlike dependency, and then also been forced to be a mother with a mission, a role she detested but could not abandon to others because she herself had been abandoned by her mother. Filled with Flux power and the responsibility to preserve the Haller records and projects, she had never had time to learn to be a normal human.
She still wasn’t normal, and she still certainly could continue the Haller tradition at New Pericles if she wanted, but she could be human, now, too. Like Morgaine, she could blame it on the spell, even to herself and certainly to others.
Spirit had no trouble riding a horse, but could not abide the idea of a saddle on her bare behind. A blanket, mostly to protect the horse, was enough. She still could ride and very well, too. They sat on their horses and stared at the empty third. “I guess they kept Verdugo,” Morgaine noted without a lot of regret.
“Somehow, I have it in my head that it was in your father’s mind that it might happen that way,” her mother replied. “I think, though, justice would have been better served if he’d been made an Eve.”
10
ALONG CAME THE SPIDERS . . .
“Oh, this is just great!” Matson growled. “I start off with a strong group and I get two wizards and two naked beauties! You other two better watch out! You’re next!”
“I’ve had my turn, thanks,” Sondra replied.
“So had I,” Spirit reminded her. “This, however, is much better than the first time. Full communication, use of tools, riding horses. . . . Much better.”
“It’s your own damned fault for being wizards,” Matson responded, still irritated. “You get so much power you can’t see your blind spots. Every one of you thinks you’re one of the dozen—out of millions—who can escape some of the penalty for power. Eventually it gets you. Either it sticks you in a niche being something you don’t want, or it turns you into something permanently you don’t want to be. Either of you could have created your own binding spells to keep you as you were, but I never saw a wizard who’d do that voluntarily.”
“You’d give up too much,” Dell told him. “We’re only tracking and keeping close to the raiders because of our ability to transform ourselves and get the big picture. One of the big advantages is that sometimes you might need to be somebody, or something, else.”
“It is true,” Morgaine agreed. “To lock yourself in, as you are, forever—it’s just not humanly possible.”
“Uh huh. And look at the both of you now. Both Dell’s and Sondra’s times will come eventually, too. If not on this trip, then sooner or later. Me, I’ve got almost no power, but nobody can force a binding spell on me, either. Anything done to me can be reversed.”
“Yeah. Like Verdugo,” Morgaine responded.
“Even him—if we ever figured out which one he was, and if anybody was so inclined, which I’m not. When I discovered he was carrying a signal tracker, I handed him a knotted noose, and the damned fool stuck his head in it. I had to do it. I discovered he was sending back position reports using a clever communications gadget. There’s been a New Eden force trailing us almost since the start, a couple of days back so we didn’t realize it. I suspected something when he started bragging too much to Morgaine, but it wasn’t until the two of you went off a couple of days ago that I had a chance to really search his stuff and find it. It was pretty well concealed.”
“I still can’t help but pity him, though,” Spirit said. “He was the product of his culture and didn’t have much choice.”
“None of that!” Matson snapped. “Yeah, his attitudes were shaped by New Eden, but you got to volunteer for internal security duty. He could have had a thousand decent jobs, but he was the type that liked lording it over helpless people. He was the closest thing to a Fluxlord you can have in Anchor. He had plans for all of us we wouldn’t like—bet on it. Some people are just born bad.”
“Well, he won’t have any more plans now,” Sondra noted. “It’s my guess that he’s about to be co-opted by the enemy.”
Both Spirit and Morgaine looked up at her. “Something happen?” Spirit asked.
“Yeah. We found out what they were waiting for. Three bright creatures, the strongest power links I’ve ever seen, Mervyn included. They came out of the sky while you were in there getting made over, and went through the shield like it wasn’t there. They were expected.”
Matson nodded. “Either Ayesha or Suzl has realized that time is running out for them. They’re not going any further—whoever they were heading for has been sent for and summoned to them. They now have enough wizard power in there to withstand a major siege. My guess is they’ll take on the gods of the Garden because that increases their power even more, then build a new Fluxland at this point, larger and stronger. They’ll have all the slaves they need to do their bidding for them and enough brains and protection not to worry about outside attacks for a while.”
“We should have taken them on when it was just Suzl and the mob,” Dell said morosely. “Hit ’em early when they were still weak.”
“Yeah. Just like Morgaine,” Matson responded. “Liberty tried it, too. The only time they were vulnerable was when they were just outside New Eden, and at that time we were locked in by Morgaine and considerations about Suzl. When they moved out fully into Flux, we didn’t have a prayer, because anyone who could get close enough to do ’em real damage could be pinpointed and neutralized by that projector. No, we’re stuck. We don’t even know who that is in there now, or who’s really in charge. If there were only some way to get somebody inside. …”
“It seems hard to believe,” Sondra put in. “A whole world full of people, including enough wizards to demolish that camp down there even with their additions, and we’re the only ones doing a damned thing and it isn’t much.”
“Nobody seems to learn anything from the past except better and more efficient ways of killing or enslaving other people,” her father agreed. “The records are incomplete, but it looks like the world I grew up in—the world of stringers and the Holy Mother Church and the rest—was actually created out of Flux by only a couple of crazy people. Except for the stringers, the remains of the old Army Signal Corps, they froze everybody in their crazy dream for twenty-six hundred plus years. The people back then understood a lot more about their machines than we do now, but they still let it happen. They knew about the threat and they knew who to watch—Haller’s journal makes that clear—yet they didn’t unite to stop it. You expect their descendants to be any more united, to really believe the threat, any more than they did back then?”
“They united against the Samish,” Dell pointed out.
“Yeah. Twenty-six hundred years of scare propaganda, with good reason, left no doubts in anybody’s mind that something nasty was out there. Even then, the real powers didn’t start for the Gates until the ships were physically docked. These are lords of Flux versus lords of Anchor. They won’t cooperate on anything because they’re afraid the other fellow’s gonna get the projector. They’re waiting for the big fight, like always, prepared to pick up the pieces. Only there ain’t gonna be no pieces to pick up this time.”
Spirit had been quiet, lost in thought and ignoring the conversation. Now she said, “If you’re convinced that they’re really going to attack the Garden, then I could get inside. I can return any time. I look just like all the other Eves there, and it is a condition of my spell that if I return I will be subject to the master spell. There would be no way for any of them to tell who or what I was.”